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Sunday July 6th 2008 |
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Sunday July 6th 2008 |
a non-profit education organization | |
November 11
She was born in Evansville, Indiana, her father was a minister and her mother was a homemaker. As a child, her family moved around the country quite a bit, with Shirley’s earliest memories coming from New Orleans, as well as a beginning dose of (not) fairy tales but novels such as Ben Hur and Quo Vadis for children’s reading. Young Graham graduated from high school in Spokane, Washington, and though soon married, her husband died within three years leaving her with two sons. Feeling a need for a better education to provide for her family, Graham moved to Paris in 1929 to study music composition, a year later she returned to America teaching at Morgan College in Baltimore for two years. She received her undergraduate and master degrees from Oberlin College in 1934 and 1935. Graham then taught music and arts at Agricultural and Industrial State College in Nashville, she also became a supervisor at the Chicago Federal Theater in 1936. It was at this time that she wrote a number of plays, Coal Dust 1938, I Gotta Home 1939, and Dust to Earth 1941, she also wrote a play for radio Track Thirteen in 1940. Shirley Graham married W.E.B. DuBois in 1951, a man she had met as a child of thirteen and admired for many years. After many world tours with her husband, Ms. Dubois became a citizen of Ghana in 1961. After her husband died in 1963, Dubois took over a number of his unfinished projects, yet in 1967 she was forced to leave during a military take over. Relocating to Cairo, Egypt where her son worked as a journalist, DuBois wrote and published for the rest of her life. Some of her works include: His Day is marching On 1971, Game! Abdul Nasser, Son of the Nile 1974, Julius K. Nyerere, Teacher of Africa 1975, and a novel The Zulu Heart. Shirley DuBois died from breast cancer in March 1977. Reference: Black Women in America An Historical Encyclopedia Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York ISBN 0-926019-61-9
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The African American Registry®, The African American Registry® Copyright 2005, 2006
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